October 21st – Top Stories

The U.S. economy has been hurt by a recent budget standoff in Washington and it is important that the nation does not go through another around of brinkmanship, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said on Sunday.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, Lew said he was confident the economy, which he described as resilient, would recover from the 16-day partial shutdown of the federal government.

China’s central government called for “unrelenting” implementation of its economic policies and reform measures to consolidate the nation’s recovery from a two-quarter slowdown and improve the quality of growth.

While the economy is “stable and trending for the better,” and the nation has the ability to achieve this year’s targets, the foundations of the rebound are “not yet firm,” the State Council said in a statement late yesterday after an Oct. 18 meeting led by PremierLi Keqiang.

Brussels is standing its ground against Mario Draghi over the EU curbs on bank bailouts, despite the European Central Bank president warning that overzealous haircuts of bank bondholders could destroy confidence.

The strongly worded intervention from Mr Draghi, in a private letter leaked this weekend, came as he prepares to launch a deep review and stress test of banks on Wednesday, which is expected to expose capital shortfalls that eurozone states will need to cover.